Four out of five businesses still remain concerned about the security risks of employees working remotely, according to the 2021 Thales Global Data Threat Report. This concern is despite organisations being over a year into remote working and looking ahead to likely shifts to hybrid remote.
The new report has found that managing security risks is undoubtedly getting more challenging with 47% of businesses seeing an increase in the volume, severity, and/or scope of cyber attacks in the past 12 months.
Of those who have experienced a breach even once, 41% happened in 2020, nearly doubling from 21% in 2019, marking a significant shift in the threat posed.
Globally, malware (54%) is the leading source of security attacks, followed by ransomware (48%) and phishing (41%).
Yet, when it comes to how attacks occur, the message is clear - internal threats and human error are still of great concern to industry. A third of businesses stated that malicious insiders (35%) and human error (31%) are the greatest risks to them, followed by external attackers (22%).
Despite the increased risk remote working has posed to enterprises throughout the pandemic, 46% of businesses report that their security infrastructure was not prepared to handle the risks caused by coronavirus. In fact, only 20% of organisations believe it was very prepared.
The majority of businesses still have remote working cyber security concerns one year into the pandemic, according to the report.
The report said organisations also need to make internal changes to ensure that personnel at all levels understand the security challenges and to properly align investment priorities. Senior executives need to obtain a more complete understanding of the levels of risk and attack activity that their front-line staff are experiencing.
The 2021 Thales Global Data Threat Report, a commissioned study was conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The report was based on a global survey of more than 2,600 executives with responsibility for or influence over IT and data security representing a wide range of industries. M